Hello, I am Shunta Tamura, a 1st year student. I learned many unknown and interesting things, when I communicated with American student. However, I am not good at English, so I had a hard time.
 First, the American students were very kind and funny! The most interesting part was about the favorite foods of American students. They were sushi, pizza, and many other foods, but the most surprising of all was that an American student said, “I like natto!”.
 The next thing that surprised me in my interactions with American students was that most of them were so tall. I am not very tall, so I envied them.
 Finally, unfortunately, I had some the difficulties in interacting with the American students. I am not very good at English, so it was very difficult for me to understand what they were saying. If I did understand them, I was also worried that they would not understand what I was saying. Luckily, I was happy because I had some good English conversations because I used English words and gestures to communicate what I couldn't tell. I am happy that I did not give up and continued talking because I could gradually understand what they were saying after talking with them every day.

Shunta Tamura 

I’m Rattiya Mebusaya—or just call me Jane—and I’m from Thailand. The classes, Tossa Mebusaya and I are responsible for are mostly related to innovation and entrepreneurship in both Kanazawa and Hakusanroku campus. On June 8th, it was the anniversary of our being here and working for 3 years. I’m kind of a new full-time employee at ICT, but I’m not new here. I graduated from KIT studying in Nakazawa Sensei’s lab and had been temporarily working at ICT’s Kanazawa office—helping out here and there—for two and a half years. Now, I’m mostly at the Kanazawa campus but work at the Hakusanroku campus from time to time.

Tossa and I have a mission here to build an entrepreneurship program for students. In these past three years, it has been good, bad, exciting, and many other things in between. It has been a great experience and full of opportunities. We have done so many things so far—some have paid off, and some still need time and adjustment. With the startup and entrepreneur mindset, everything is an opportunity, and every failure is a lesson. We just need to move forward and act fast.

We’re really proud of our students in the startup and entrepreneur program. There will be more opportunities and learning throughout this long journey. We have not only taught students in classes—since entrepreneurship and a startup mindset need consistency and real-world, uncertain experiences—we also need to be part of a strong ecosystem to create a successful learning environment.

Even though we have not yet completely fulfilled all our goals, these are the activities we’ve built up so far at both the Kanazawa and Hakusanroku campuses. Here are some pictures of what we’ve done so far at ICT—our first and second KIT & ICT Startup Boot Camps. These boot camps were created to educate and support anyone interested in startups—not just ICT students, but also KIT students and even faculty and staff. We've been running them for about two years. This year, we will move to the next stage of startup development.

Startup Boot Camp

Next are our first and second ICT Startup Competitions. In these events, we’ve hosted a couple of interesting panels to educate and update participants on both Japanese and global startup trends. We’ve invited Japanese and international startups, investors, and other key ecosystem players such as Tech Startup HOKURIKU(TeSH), government representatives, and more. After the panels, we held a pitching competition. We’ve recruited teams from ICT, KIT (although no one from KIT has joined yet), and universities in other countries such as Thailand, Vietnam, and Malaysia. We hope that in the coming year, we’ll have more international teams as well as local teams from other universities, colleges, and technical colleges or KOSENs.

ICT Startup Competition 2024

ICT Startup Competition 2025

We’ve also built connections with entrepreneurs and others in the ecosystem through important events such as the Matching HUB Hokuriku, SusHi Tech Tokyo, and visits to universities in other countries. Lastly, we have been coaching our students for competitions such as the Entrepreneurship KOSEN Summit and the High School Students’ Dream Award.

Entrepreneurship KOSEN Summit

Other Entrepreneurship Events

Right now, our office is based at the ICT Kanazawa campus. If anyone is interested in Innovation, Startups, or Entrepreneurship, please feel free to swing by and see us at the Innovation Lab—we’d love for you to get to know us. Or, if you’d like to learn more about us first, you can also visit our Facebook page to see more details and activities。
https://www.facebook.com/share/g/1Gi66wGeQo/

In the future, we plan to host events that anyone can join to learn more about current entrepreneurs or share ideas—even short, casual pitches on solving real-world problems. It will be fun to share ideas without boundaries.

Play time at ICT Kanazawa after a hard day’s work. There are always opportunities for creativity and excitement.

Rattiya Mebusaya

 AI is a part of our everyday lives, encompassing chatbots, smart recommendations, and image generators, but do our students truly understand how it works?

 This is Apirak Sang-ngenchai, and I am teaching 2nd year students in the "Fundamentals of AI" class. In our class, we focus on an active learning approach that helps students understand the fundamental concepts behind AI through engaging with the topic. Instead of just listening to lectures, students explore the world of AI through a variety of fun, interactive activities.

 We started with the basic questions: What is AI? What is machine learning? And how can a computer see and recognize an object? Rather than explaining everything through slides, we used activities that sparked curiosity and brought these topics to life.

Here are some of the tools and activities we used:

• Chat with Eliza: A simple AI chatbot that mimics a therapist. This helped students understand rule-based AI and how early AI systems communicated with users, unlike ChatGPT or Co-pilot, which provide a smarter and more diverse range of information nowadays. It also led to fun and thoughtful conversations about how AI can seem “smart” even when it doesn’t really understand us.
  Link: https://web.njit.edu/~ronkowit/eliza.html

• Google Quick, Draw: A game where students draw objects and the AI tries to guess what they’re drawing. This activity introduced the concept of unsupervised learning techniques and pattern recognition, showing how machines learn from massive amounts of human data.
  Link: https://quickdraw.withgoogle.com/
  
  
• Teachable Machine: An easy-to-use website where students can train their image or human body key points recognition models. Students quickly grasped the idea of training data, labels, and model accuracy, as well as the concept of supervised learning techniques, while having fun with creative experiments.
  Link: https://teachablemachine.withgoogle.com/
  
  
• Google Colab Coding: We also introduced students to basic Python coding on Google Colab. They ran simple machine learning scripts, changed parameters, and observed how the results changed. This provided them with a hands-on introduction to machine learning algorithms without requiring a complex setup.
  Link: https://colab.google/

 Through these activities, students didn’t just learn about AI; they also gained practical experience. They experienced how it works. They learned that machines require training, that data is important, and that results aren’t always perfect. Active learning also helped create a lively classroom atmosphere where students helped each other, shared discoveries, and reflected together. In the end, they weren’t just learning about AI. They were learning how to learn actively, a skill that will be valuable across all disciplines no matter what the future brings.

Apirak Sang-ngenchai

 Hello, this is Hitoshi Kihara, I am in charge of some of the Math classes at ICT. I am going to introduce the Math Battle that was held on Tuesday, June 3rd, 2025, for the 2nd year Calculus class.
 In our regular Calculus classes, each student creates a problem and its solution based on the day’s lesson, and in pairs we check each other’s work.
 This event, held just before the midterm exam, was designed as a comprehensive review. I turned our usual activity into a team-based competition. The team that created the most problems and solved the most problems from the opposing team within the limited time would be the winner.
 This was my first attempt at holding a Math Battle, but the students participated with remarkable focus and enthusiasm.
 It was impressive to see them trying to create problems that were as challenging as possible so the opposing team couldn’t solve them. Also, it was impressive to see their determination as they worked through the other team’s problems, attempting to solve them by trial and error.
 Of course, due to the limited time, some problems and solutions had minor flaws. However, many students also came up with truly excellent problems.
 Below is an example of one such problem.

 At first glance, this problem may look long and complicated, but if they apply what we've learned in class, the solution is actually quite simple. That said, solving it does require accurate calculation skills. It’s a truly excellent problem, packed with multiple mathematical elements within just one question.
 During the Math Battle, there was a friendly and lively atmosphere with both the problem creators and solvers being all smiles. But it’s funny, isn’t it? If I gave a similar problem on the midterm exam, I’m pretty sure I’d be met with endless complaints and a much more brutal atmosphere. Anyway, the answer to the earlier problem is 1 over 184,756. What an incredible number! Hmm … maybe I’d better not include it on the midterm after all. Well then, until next time!

Create problems for each team

Solve the problem created by the opposing team and have the original creators check your answer

Hitoshi Kihara

Hello! This is Hiroko Takeda, a 3rd year student who loves shimaenaga (a bird called long- tailed tit). It is now the middle of the 1st semester. I am getting used to the classes. There are no serious science subjects such as math yet, so I am spending my days at a fairly relaxed pace. In this journal, I would like to introduce a little bit about my life in New Zealand.

Letter to Grandma
Getting used to life in New Zealand, I decided to send a postcard to my grandmother and went on a little journey to find one that would give her a sense of New Zealand. First, I went to a souvenir shop. However, I could not find any postcards that caught my eye. I also visited another souvenir shop, but I couldn't find anything there either. Then I went to a bookstore, but still could not find any. Finally, I found a postcard with cute illustrations of a kiwi and a fantail (New Zealand birds) at another bookstore called “Paper Plus”.

After I finished writing, I took the postcard to the bookstore where I bought it, and the staff helped me by putting a stamp and a blue sticker on it. Then I put it in the postbox in front of the store, and that was it!! It hasn't arrived yet, so I'm still waiting eagerly.

Green! Birds! Sore muscles!
I went to the Dunedin Botanic Garden, which is a little north of the school. The first place we went to was the greenhouse. It was really interesting to see plants that I don't usually come across. My favorite area was the one with the cacti lined up.

After that, we sat on a bench with a nice view and ate lunch. The sun felt warm, and it was one of those moments that made me think, “This kind of holiday is really nice.”　Then we decided to go to a place we found on the map that was supposed to have lots of birds. There were many colorful birds there, and I remember feeling very uplifted. I forgot the names of each bird, but I’ll post some photos of my favorites.

After walking for a long time on a road with lots of ups and downs, I ended up with sore muscles. It made me realize that I’m not getting enough exercise. Walking takes time, but it’s the one way I can always rely on to get around. I want to build up my stamina so I can walk for longer periods.

The Way to School
If someone asked me whether I prefer dogs or cats, I would answer “cats” without hesitation. However, the pet at my homestay is a dog. That made me a little sad, but I often see cats on my way to school, which is really soothing. I got so excited that I started taking pictures on the spot, but some people saw me and I felt a bit embarrassed… Maybe I should tone it down a little from now on.
Actually, a friend told me that there are wild hedgehogs in this area. I haven't encountered one yet, but I really want to see one.

There have been many things I’m not used to, but I’m surprised at how well I’ve been managing. I’ll keep doing my best from now on, too.

Hiroko Takeda